S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series Megathread: Maybe someday mods releasing edition - Games

[QUOTE=Marbalo;52019554]What's even more important than the actual quality of the texture itself is the design it bares. All mods fall for this. Why only focus on how ~HD HQ Super 4K~ (or how accurate, down to the bolts) the textures are when it sticks out like a sore thumb in a very old, very dated engine? The focus should instead be on the intricate, small, personalized details a weapon has that really drives home how beautifully handcrafted the mod really is. A scratch there, fracture here, wear and tear on the handle from years of daily use, subtle differences in the color of the wood, small things that make sense and click in your head instantly the moment you see it. If you really want to push STALKER texture modding to the next level, put some thought into this. God is in the details.[/QUOTE] Honestly, I think I'd be fine with vanilla STALKER-sized textures if they just had lots personalized details like you said.

I can't but disagree. The "vanilla texture size" was due to the game advising a [B]128MB video frame-buffer[/B], because the engine dated from 2004 when 128MB was already an insane amount. Imagine we have 100 fold this amount today, of which 20-30% of the market has at least 1-to-2GB of video memory alone. Using 512x512 or 1024x1024 textures today when 2048x2048 would substitute without any significant performance impact seems silly to me. Here's a perfect example from PRZ2, a texture I upsized and remade: Original 512x512: [URL]http://media.moddb.com/images/members/1/366/365208/crete_floor4a_old.jpg[/URL] [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/members/1/366/365208/crete_floor4a_old.jpg[/t] New 2048x2048 (resized to 1024 for the jpg) [URL]http://media.moddb.com/images/members/1/366/365208/crete_floor4-new.jpg[/URL] [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/members/1/366/365208/crete_floor4-new.jpg[/t] Makes this: [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/members/1/366/365208/ss_kevin_08-22-12_19-36-05_l01_escape.jpg[/t] That's a small improvement worth doing, since GPU's since 2007 are powerful enough to run games like STALKER in 1080p with textures like these past 60FPS comfortably. But, as long as the engine is not running 64-bit, I can't stress it enough that "4k textures" are a gimmick (also due to texture compression and how xray handles higher resolution textures). The difference in 2048x2048, 4096x4096 and 8192x8192 is close to none from what I've noticed and tested. I tried it on bigger scale, and to no surprise I didn't notice a difference, either. Check REMAKE for CoP. Almost all 4K textures. Yet Dante advices to run texture quality at 75% which actually decreases the quality, since the engine can't run it and CTD's. I myself tried using a 8192x8192 custom texture that projects on top of the map. Absolutely no difference either, between 4096 and 8192 using the same compression method (almost no compression, A8R8G8B8 with fanted mips instead of DXT5). 2048x2048 diffuse and bump is the max I recommend for 1st-person objects and items. 4096x4096 is nice for ground / structures since the size of the tile is bigger, but like I said, you notice almost no true gain in texture fidelity and how much do you look down at the ground or a wall anyway? [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/31/30959/screenshot_mrcod_03-26-17_04-01-46_l01_escape.png[/t] [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/31/30959/screenshot_mrcod_03-25-17_18-27-20_l01_escape.png[/t] [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/31/30959/screenshot_mrcod_03-25-17_18-33-14_l01_escape.png[/t] Or Vadims AK74-M with 4K diffuse, metallic and normals [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/members/1/366/365208/aknna1-1.jpg[/t] This looks great, but how many of you would notice these textures in comparison to 2048x2048? Not saying using 4K is foolish, but for now with only ~3,65GB of memory allocation available, I wouldn't suggest using 20/30MB textures across the board. /rant

Those textures looks fantastic! + Ninja models = other Zone! :flex:

it's amazing how good this ancient engine looks if ignoring the crappy models/low res textures

[QUOTE=SirJon;52020531]it's amazing how good this ancient engine looks if ignoring the crappy models/low res textures[/QUOTE] goes to show what a nice lighting engine can do for the looks of stuff

[QUOTE='Ninja Nub[NOR];52020562']goes to show what a nice lighting engine can do for the looks of stuff[/QUOTE] Stalker's renderer was incredibly ahead of it's time, it's pretty impressive stuff

Has anyone here tried to get ReShade to work with SoC? I've done just about everything I could think of to get this damn thing to run but it just fucking doesn't, even though the log file shows no errors. I found out you need a cracked .exe for ENB and I managed to get that running, but that doesn't seem to make a difference for ReShade [url]https://www.reddit.com/r/stalker/comments/56cb9v/cant_open_reshade_configuration_window_ingame_soc/[/url] This is the only thing I managed to find about the issue and "it's erratic" isn't really helpful

Random question because of what ManRod was saying about the AK's lack of wear - is it possible to swap out models/textures of a gun based on the condition variables? I know it's a fair bit of extra asset work but if a gun could have three "stages" (ie. >66%, 34-65%, <33% CND) it would be pretty awesome for immersion IMO, however unlikely it is to happen.

LoNeR, that texture is great and the improvement is noticeable. But I can't help but feel like you missed the point. What he meant was that all the hi-res textures in the world are a waste of graphics memory if you lose the original feel of the game. The reason your texture looks and feels good in the game is that it matches the original in tone. What he's saying is he'd prefer original resolution textures that match the feel of the originals on new assets to pointlessly high resolution textures that stick out.

[QUOTE=Grenadiac;52020740]LoNeR, that texture is great and the improvement is noticeable. But I can't help but feel like you missed the point. What he meant was that all the hi-res textures in the world are a waste of graphics memory if you lose the original feel of the game. The reason your texture looks and feels good in the game is that it matches the original in tone. What he's saying is he'd prefer original resolution textures that match the feel of the originals on new assets to pointlessly high resolution textures that stick out.[/QUOTE] Ah like so, then I take back my words. I do agree, but sadly it's a huge endeavour to remodel everything in the game. Gunslinger Addon Team is trying to do it, but I am sure they won't remodel the buildings and level geometry. That would be like creating a whole new game in its own.

[QUOTE=LoNer1;52021052]Ah like so, then I take back my words. I do agree, but sadly it's a huge endeavour to remodel everything in the game. Gunslinger Addon Team is trying to do it, but I am sure they won't remodel the buildings and level geometry. That would be like creating a whole new game in its own.[/QUOTE] I still wonder if just subdividing and smoothing out the ground mesh is an easy thing to do.

Just outright subdividing it would cause a lot of issues. Subdiving, while "smoothing" a mesh also has a way of distorting it, Not to mention afaik the ground geometry is a mess of triangles and stretched polys, so not exactly the best candidate for subdivision anyway.

[QUOTE=Grenadiac;52020740]LoNeR, that texture is great and the improvement is noticeable. But I can't help but feel like you missed the point. What he meant was that all the hi-res textures in the world are a waste of graphics memory if you lose the original feel of the game. The reason your texture looks and feels good in the game is that it matches the original in tone. What he's saying is he'd prefer original resolution textures that match the feel of the originals on new assets to pointlessly high resolution textures that stick out.[/QUOTE] I wouldn't say that; I've played this game to death so many times that I want things that are different from the originals. I never really agreed with a lot of the original model choices for things anyway, so anything is improvement most of the time. Yeah, the original sunrise suit is iconic and all, but it's weird looking and I think Ninja's models end up looking better because they're more believable. Same goes for weapons; the original models/animations aren't really that good anyway, so most mods improve it just by being different.

[QUOTE=LoNer1;52020281][/B], /rant[/QUOTE] I'm also an advocate against 4k textures; it's not necessary unless more people are playing at higher resolutions. When you have a 4k texture with mipmaps it's going to be using the lower-res mips almost 100% of the time. If an object is rendering only 800 pixels on screen the GPU knows to swap in the 1024x1024 mip and if you playing at 1080p it's going to be using 2048 mips when you get up close, not full 4096. The things that shouldn't be mipped are what you see up close, like hud models and sky box. Hud models are where you can see a difference with 4k but if you are playing at 1080p then all you need is 2k textures. One would see more noticeable improvement in texture detail if they used a better mipmap filter like Kaiser. As for memory usage, we are working with squares. The jump between 1024 to 2048 is pretty big when you consider hundreds of textures and the jump from 2048 to 4096 is exponentially greater. So I would say it's extremely foolish to put 4k textures in Xray when it's only 32-bit.

A 1024x1024 with a nice normal map and spec should be good enough honestly

[QUOTE=-Rusty-;52027694]A 1024x1024 with a nice normal map and spec should be good enough honestly[/QUOTE] For SoC? I would definitely agree. For CoP? I firmly disagree. The game has loads of headroom for higher resolution textures. While I get where you're coming from, seeing as most of the vanilla maps are 1024x1024 diffuse, 512x512 normals, I think current gen GPU have well over 10 times the power these games demand and most importantly, the compression method used in said textures*. When purely looking at texture load, you could probably have 1024x1024 for pistols and such, but rifles and larger weapons are suited to 2048x2048 with optionally 1024x1024 normals or the other way around. And I'm saying this because [B]Gunslinger[/B] is utilising 2048x2048 textures as a standard (and this is even disregarding the fact that their models are much more up to date and detailed). And, they don't all have i7-6700k's, 32GB of memory and a GTX-1000 series card or better to [I]always[/I] run the mod at smooth 60FPS. *I think the main difference in FPS hit / load times is also the compression method used. Here's a perfect example: This is a texture saved in 3 compression methods; - One is lossless A8R8G8B8 (lossless with alpha), - the other DXT5 (most common for textures with an alpha channel), - and another DXT1 (opaque / no alpha). [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/tcgJHuD.png[/IMG] The difference for the same size is staggering while there is 0 reason to use A8R8B8G8 [B]for textures which aren't for UI elements[/B]. I personally use A8R8B8G8 for my HUD mods, that do require you to run maximum texture detail, but it makes the HUD details much more crisp, since the format is lossless. But I see lots of artists misusing the compression and using DXT5 for non-alpha maps (such as environmental textures ranging from walls, the ground, skyboxes etc.) increasing memory load by a lot. If you'd cut down on that, lets say, go through every single file that has no alpha channel and cut down the size from 5,3MB to 2,7MB, you'd half the amount of memory used. A real life example of this is PRZ v2.2 in comparison to v2. ~600MB of textures "cleaned up" by resaving them in the right compression method (even though it's still littered with vanilla textures). Radium as well runs at 900MB on DX11 with everything maxed. So, higher resolution textures are certainly possible and a welcome change, but they need to be applied much like any other feature; with performance in mind.

Well damn, I'd love to see a proper mod that does actual texture improvements. Since I've been out of the loop for a very long time I'm not aware of any. Anything I have seen that was labeled "HD" or w/e was just some shitty lighting "improvement" mod with lens flare and bloom everywhere.

presented [t]http://puu.sh/v2Noe/46af385eea.jpg[/t] without [t]http://puu.sh/v2NpE/b93c7a3be1.jpg[/t] comment [t]http://puu.sh/v2Nqy/36341fde1b.jpg[/t]

What's the matter, too real for you?

I think the point is that they don't really "fit in"

They stick out like a sore thumb among the game's other assets.

Perhaps they wouldn't with the introduction of the "house-cleaning" anomaly that just sucks the dirt and mold off of everything and leaves the zone a nice, comfortable spotless place to explore! :xfiles:

[QUOTE=ghosevil;52030332]Perhaps they wouldn't with the introduction of the "house-cleaning" anomaly that just sucks the dirt and mold off of everything and leaves the zone a nice, comfortable spotless place to explore! :xfiles:[/QUOTE] I would actually love to see something like that ala Roadside Picnic, just perfectly untouched vehicles or something.

Some pretty good looking textures up there, a little bit of grit wouldn't quit. Why did everyone leave the gsc forums? It's empty over there

Quick question here, I read that Original Weapons Renewal 3 was highly mergeable with other mods including the near-mandatory Atmosfear, but I can't find shit about merging AF with OWR3. I did as it said in the readme to install AF, delete the gamedata folder, and install OWR 3's gamedata and bin folders. But I get the menu item for AF but it doesn't do anything. I can tick the boxes and change settings, but it has no effect. The vanilla weather systems suck and emissions take damn near weeks to happen and almost exclusively happen when traveling. I need those emissions to restock my anomaly fields, which seem to take several emissions to restock even the lowest of level artifacts. It's not that I need the money ingame but I've decided to collect all non-quest artifacts and this is slowing me down quite a lot. I'm about to head to pripyat and I don't even have a bubble yet.

[QUOTE=TKGP;52030111]What's the matter, too real for you?[/QUOTE] [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/24/23400/image1.jpg[/t] [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/24/23400/ss_dante_09-13-13_18-59-28_zatonc.jpg[/t] [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/24/23400/ss_dante_03-14-15_10-20-35_zaton.jpg[/t] I mean, these do look nice, but it's mostly the ReShade preset and it's very stylized. [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/33/32663/xrEngine_2017-03-27_12-59-08-38.1.png[/t][t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/33/32663/xrEngine_2017-03-27_13-35-47-44.png[/t] [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/33/32663/xrEngine_2017-03-27_13-22-57-66.png[/t] And [B]Rusty,[/B] allow me to shill [URL="http://www.moddb.com/mods/photo-realistic-zone-2/"]my unfinished mod[/URL]; [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/members/1/366/365208/XR_3DA_2013-09-17_23-27-57-43.png[/t][t]http://media.moddb.com/images/members/1/366/365208/XR_3DA_2013-09-17_23-32-01-84.png[/t] [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/members/1/366/365208/ss_kevin_07-21-16_18-21-53_l07_military.jpg[/t][t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/20/19369/XR_3DA_2013-09-26_20-49-23-46.png[/t] [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/20/19369/XR_3DA_2015-11-16_11-15-22-31.png[/t][t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/20/19369/XR_3DA_2015-11-16_01-34-03-84.png[/t] [t]http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/20/19369/XR_3DA_2015-11-13_15-42-33-42.png[/t]

[QUOTE=LoNer1;52034010]things[/QUOTE] I'll have to check that out I've wanted to make my own but it's just too much

So it seems the chat mod has been taken over by spam bots. That's just fucking great.

[QUOTE=Electrocuter;52036634]So it seems the chat mod has been taken over by spam bots. That's just fucking great.[/QUOTE] Ah jeez it's Barotrauma all over again

Man being immersed by the chat function really gets me into the whole "the zone is a misery" thing [t]http://i.imgur.com/VMCBMO0.png[/t]